Chapter 31: Sunaina's Story

Sunaina tells me her story on a January morning — the anniversary of my arrival in Mumbai, which I didn't mention to anyone because anniversaries of arrivals are: private, the kind of thing you hold inside and examine alone, the way you examine a stone you've been carrying in your pocket, turning it over to see if it's changed.

But Sunaina knows. Sunaina knows things without being told, the way teachers know when a student is struggling and the way yoga practitioners know when a body is: holding.

"One year," she says. We're in Studio A, before class. She's laying out the mats — the ritual that she performs every morning: twelve mats, evenly spaced, each one aligned with the one beside it, the alignment being: not obsession but respect. Respect for the space. Respect for the practice. Respect for the bodies that will arrive and place themselves on these mats and trust her with: their weight.

"One year," I confirm. "I didn't think you'd notice."

"I notice: everything. It's the curse of teaching. You learn to see bodies and then you can't: stop seeing them. In the supermarket. On the train. Everywhere. I see posture and I think: that woman's husband is unkind. That man's mother just died. That child is loved. The body says: everything."

"My body said: everything?"

"Your body said: 'I have been invisible for a very long time and I am afraid of being seen.' That's what your body said in January. On the first day."

She sits on the floor. Not on a mat — on the bare wood, cross-legged, her spine the straight line that her spine always is, the line that is: not rigid but aligned, the alignment of a woman who has spent twenty years teaching bodies to: be.

"I want to tell you something," she says. "Because it's your anniversary. And anniversaries deserve: truth."

"Tell me."

"I wasn't always: this." She gestures at herself — at the white clothes, the calm face, the spine, the stillness that Sunaina wears the way other people wear: noise. "I was: angry. For years. The angriest person you'd ever meet."

"You?"

"Me. Sunaina Mehta, yoga teacher, woman of: breath and surrender and 'the tears are the practice working.' I was: rage."

The word "rage" from Sunaina is: disorienting. Like hearing a monk say "I used to rob banks." The disorientation of a person you've placed in one category suddenly declaring: I belong in another.

"I grew up in Ahmedabad. My father was: a mathematician. Brilliant. Genuinely brilliant — the kind of brilliant that produces: equations that nobody understands and a household that nobody enjoys. He lived in numbers. He spoke in numbers. He loved in: numbers, which means he didn't love at all, because love is: not an equation, love is a practice, and practice requires: presence, and my father was present only in: abstract."

"My mother was: the opposite. Warm. Loud. The kind of Gujarati woman who feeds everyone and asks questions and fills rooms with: herself. She married my father because — I asked her once — because 'he was the smartest man I'd ever met and I thought smart meant: good.' Smart doesn't mean good. Smart means: smart. Good means: good. They're different: currencies."

"I was the middle child. Three sisters. The eldest married well — which in Ahmedabad means: married rich. The youngest was: the baby. I was: the in-between. The one who was not special in any direction. Not the smartest, not the prettiest, not the most obedient. Just: there."

She pauses. The pause of a woman assembling memories into: a sequence. The sequence that makes a life into: a story.

"I found yoga at nineteen. At the university. A teacher — Guruji, we called him, everyone called him Guruji because he was: a man who deserved the title, which is rare because most people who are called Guruji are: charlatans. Guruji was: the real thing. He taught Iyengar yoga — the precise kind, the kind that uses props and alignment and that treats the body as: an instrument, not an ornament."

"The first class — I cried. Like you. In pigeon pose. Guruji said: 'The tears are stored in the hips. The hips are: the filing cabinet of the emotional body.' I use that line now. His words became: my words. That's how teaching works — you absorb your teacher and then you transmit, and the transmission is: not copying but: continuing."

"I studied with Guruji for five years. I became a teacher. I moved to Mumbai because Mumbai needed yoga teachers — this was 2005, when yoga in Mumbai was: a luxury, not a lifestyle, and the studios were: few, and the opportunities were: available."

"I met a man. Vikram. He was — he was everything my father wasn't. Warm. Present. Physical. He touched me and the touching was: not mathematical. The touching was: human. I thought: this is it. This is the answer to the equation that my father never solved. Love as: presence. Love as: touch."

"We married. We were happy. Not the happiness of movies — the happiness of mornings. Chai together. Walking together. The small happinesses that are: the real happinesses."

She stops. The stopping that precedes: the part of the story that costs. The part that the storyteller has been building toward and that the storyteller knows will change: the shape of the room.

"Vikram died. In 2011. A motorcycle accident on the Western Express Highway. He was riding home from work — he worked at an architecture firm in Andheri — and a truck changed lanes without indicating and Vikram was: gone. Not slowly. Not with warning. Not with the declining health that gives you time to: prepare. Gone. In the time it takes a truck to change lanes. Which is: three seconds."

Three seconds. The time that separates: everything from nothing. The time that Sunaina has been carrying for fourteen years.

"After Vikram, I was: rage. Not grief — I expected grief. Grief I could have: held. But rage — the rage of a woman who did everything right (yoga, breath, alignment, practice) and who was given: randomness. The randomness of a truck. The randomness that says: your practice doesn't protect you. Your alignment doesn't protect you. Nothing protects you. The truck changes lanes and: everything."

"I stopped teaching. For two years. I stopped practising. I stopped: everything that had made me: me. Because if yoga couldn't protect Vikram — if the universe could give me a man who was: present and then take him away in three seconds — then what was the point of: alignment? What was the point of: breath?"

"And then?"

"And then: nothing. That's the honest answer. There was no moment. No epiphany. No 'one day I woke up and understood.' That's what books say. Books lie. What happened was: I went back to the mat. Not because I understood — because I had nothing else. The mat was: the only thing left. The last surface in the world that I could: lie down on and not fall."

"I went back to savasana. Just savasana. For weeks. Lying on the floor. Not moving. Not breathing with intention. Just: being on the floor. And the floor held me. The way the water held you in the pool. The floor said: I've got you. I'm not going anywhere. And the floor was: right. The floor doesn't change lanes."

The sentence — "the floor doesn't change lanes" — enters me the way certain sentences do: through the chest, not the mind. The sentence that rearranges your understanding of a person. The sentence that makes you realise that the woman who has been teaching you to breathe has been: breathing through damage that you cannot imagine.

"Sunaina," I say. "I didn't know."

"Nobody knows. I don't tell people because telling makes them: careful around me. And I don't want careful. I want: normal. Normal is: what Vikram would want. He was the most normal man alive. Normal in the beautiful way — the way that makes normal feel like: a gift."

"Why are you telling me?"

"Because it's your anniversary. And because you think the year you've had — the divorce, the move, the starting over — you think it's: the hardest thing. And I want you to know: it isn't. It's the bravest thing. The hardest thing is: the thing you can't control. The truck. The three seconds. What you did — leaving, choosing, building — that's not hard. That's: agency. And agency is: the only thing that the universe gives us that the truck can't take."

I hold her. In Studio A, on the wood floor, beside twelve perfectly aligned mats, I hold the woman who taught me to breathe and who has been breathing through: the unbreathable. The holding that says: I see you now. Not the teacher — the person. The person who carries fourteen years of a three-second loss and who has turned that loss into: a practice that helps strangers cry in pigeon pose and find themselves on mats that she aligned with: love.

"The tears are the practice working," I say.

"The tears are: always the practice working," she says. "Even mine."